Course Syllabus: Stress Management

Course Description

Stress is one of the most common words used in society today and a phenomenon that each one of us will experience at some point in our life. Stress affects people of all ages, professions and life situations.

While we have an innate understanding of stress and what it feels like to be stressed, defining stress can be tricky because we all react to it in different ways. However, stress can be defined as a physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension caused by our exposure to different incidence or occurrences in our lives. When we respond positively to these incidence or occurrences we do not feel stress. However, the minute we are faced with an incidence or occurrences that we feel we cannot handle, we may feel our stress mounting.

Stress is subjective to each individual; what can be considered a stressful event by one person may be less stressful to another. Therefore, stress is not caused by the event itself, but how an individual interprets the situation and deals with it. When an individual cannot cope with the demands placed on them and begins to feel negatively, this is considered a stress response.

Even though stress has become part of our everyday life; excessive stress can affect a person's health and emotional stability. It can also affect our overall quality of life by reducing productivity, creating, or exacerbating, existing health problems, and contributing to premature aging.

So what do we do about stress in our lives? How do we deal with it? Prevent it? This course comes in. Working through the lessons in this course will help you understand the origins of your stress and provide you with a practical approach for reducing stress in your life and thus, improving your health and emotional well being.

Course Requirements

This course will not require you to have previous experience in any particular area but you should have a high school reading level. No books will be required.

Course Topics

Lesson 1: Introduction to Stress

Lesson 2: What are our Stressors?

Lesson 3: Small Changes and Large Rewards

Lesson 4: Stress Prevention

Lesson 5: Coping Skills

Lesson 6: Stress in the Home

Lesson 7: Overcoming Monetary Stress and Unhealthy Worry

Lesson 8: Stress and the Workplace

Lesson 9: Dealing With Frustration and Anger

Lesson 10: Stress Reducing Exercises

Course Materials

All course materials is provided in this class. There is no need to buy additional resources.

Grading Policy

Each lesson will include a written and practice assignment that will directly apply what you have learned.

A brief 25 pt. quiz will follow each lesson. Students will successfully complete this course by mastering all learning outcomes with 70% or higher overall grade.

Learning Outcomes

By successfully completing this course, students will be able to:

Define and identify stress.

Define and identify stressors.

Describe the idea of small changes and large rewards to relieve stress.